Blood On the Pavement
by pixie blue
Summary: "One day we'll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that put it there." Sally Donovan was right - though she would certainly have never expected the body to be his own. John's thoughts immediately after The Fall. One-shot. Angsty.


A/N: I know I should be working on the next chapter of Doctor's Orders, but the idea for this sprang into my head and it just flowed out. Playing around with present tense for once. Got this done in less than half an hour. And I promise I'll have chapter 2 of Doctor's Orders up tomorrow.

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His head throbs, ears ringing, adding to the already confused shock tumbling through his head. Despite the waves of dizziness, he surges purposefully across the street. He mutters Sherlock's name under his breath like a mantra, not even realising he's doing it. Already, several frantic-looking people in doctor's scrubs are trying to hold back the small crowd filled with morbid curiosity, craning their necks over the shoving surgeons to catch a glimpse of the bloodied, broken body.

The buzzing clears, but the terrified cries and gasps, the pleas for everyone to just stay back and remain calm still seem to drift reluctantly into his ears, as if they are slugging their way through a dense fog. He reaches the crowd, forcing his way through. "Let me come through. I'm a doctor, let me come through, please." His voice catches. He needs to reach Sherlock, make sure it's him and that he's actually dead. His entreaties become more hysterical, his voice breaking as hands continue to keep him from the body. "No, he's my friend, _he's my friend_, please..." It was increasingly clear that the body lying in front of him was Sherlock Holmes, and that he was very, very dead. John couldn't tear his eyes away, a part of him still refusing to believe it, still refusing to believe Sherlock was dead, still refusing to believe _him_, to believe the lie. Sherlock was his friend, and John would always believe in him.

Moriarty was real. Sherlock was not a fraud.

John finally manages to escape the insisting, grabbing hands just enough that he can catch Sherlock's wrist, gripping it like a man drowning in a sea of sorrow. He's vaguely aware of a man just out of his teens - intern, judging by the stethoscope slung about his neck - shaking Sherlock's shoulder. _And what on earth is _that _supposed to do, anyway?_ The disconnected thought runs through John's head before being swallowed by the numbing horror of the knowledge that there is no pulse forcing blood around Sherlock's body. Death has stilled it. John is hanging on for dear life to a corpse.

Everything has happened so fast. Too fast. John's brain, nothing compared to what Sherlock's had been, is still catching up with the events, making everything that's happening seem nothing more than a bad dream. Inevitably, it crashes down on him, and his muscles cease to have the will to hold onto its lifeline. Another hand drags John's from Sherlock's wrist, and the arms that have been restraining him suddenly become the only thing that keep him from sinking to the ground and lying there until he melts away, washes away with angel's tears of rain falling from the sky.

_Sherlock's dead. He just committed suicide, he jumped off a roof, he's dead._

"Oh, Jes..." His words slur into one another, fading before they finish. "No... _God_, no." He clutches the arms struggling to keep him from hitting the tarmac, almost absently wondering why he's doing so. Wouldn't it be so much easier to just melt away, now that everything he knew before has just come crashing down before his eyes?

Tears close his throat as Sherlock is rolled over, and John can see the blood still trickling from his ears, nose and mouth, dull and lifeless gray-green eyes staring vacantly out of an ivory-pale face.

"_One day we'll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that put it there." _Sally's words echo through his head and he almost angrily shakes of the hands supporting him, standing ramrod straight, as if he's standing to attention. Always the soldier.

_Well, Donovan, you were right. Hope you're happy now._

He slumps again as Sherlock's body is hurriedly carted off on the stretcher, his own body heaving with each breath like it's all just too much.

It nearly is.

And John stands there for hours, ignoring anyone who attempts to make him move, staring at the doorway into his best friends' corpse had disappeared as the rain slowly washes away the blood on the pavement.

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A/N: Gah, I write such depressing stuff when I'm sick, or in pain, or both. Especially both. I hate coinciding colds and 'that' time of the month. God, being a girl sucks sometimes. Anyway, hope I got you all good and sad. If so, please review? I'll write more Sherlock stuff if you do, I promise.


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